Song Woo-Byeok is the main antagonist of the critical acclaimed 2023 Kdrama The Good Bad Mother. He is the corrupt CEO of Woobyeok Group.
He is the arch-nemesis of the mother and son duo, Jin Young-soon and Choi Kang-ho since he is responsible for the death of the husband and father of the duo, Choi Hae-sik.
Biography[]
Song Woo-Byeok wanted to demolish Choi Hae-sik's pig farm to make way for Olympic Torch Relay but Hae-sik angrily refused and threw the money back at him. In retaliation, Woo-Byeok had his farm burned down. He then bribed all the witnesses, causing Hae-sik to lose the farm for good. Hae-sik then sold his house to have enough money to hire prosecutor Oh Tae-Soo to bring justice but Woo-Byeok bribed him and had Hae-sik killed and staged as suicide.
Heartbroken at the unjust death of her husband, Jin Young-soon brutally groomed and raised her son Choi Kang-ho to become a successful prosecutor to one day avenge his father's death. However, her harsh method caused Kang-ho to resent her, even through he knew that he had a vendetta to take care of.
During his time in Law School, he tried to get access to the case file of his father's case but was denied since he lacked the authority of the prosecutor. This made Kang-ho to study hard to finally become a prosecutor. Eventually, after graduating from Law school and becoming a prosecutor, Kang-Ho managed to finally get his hand on his father's case file. However, when he realized the police was too corrupt to help him, he decided to infiltrate Woo-Byeok's inner circle to personally destroy him instead.
To earn Woo-Byeok's trust, Kang-Ho first managed to get Woo-Byeok's nephew out of a murder case and masqueraded himself as a corrupt prosecutor who can easily be bought. He even went as far as to break up with his long time girlfriend, Lee Mi-joo who carried his twin children at the time as well as isolating his own mother to keep them safe from Woo-Byeok and Tae-soo's machinations. At this time, Kang-Ho discovered that Oh Tae-soo has an illegitimate child with his secretary, Hwang Soo-hyun.
The Good Bad Mother[]
Kang-ho decided to seduce Oh Ha-yeong, Tae-soo's daughter to get close to Tae-soo to bring him down. Unknowneth to him, both Woo-Byeok and Tae-Soo knew his true identity from the beginning but Tae-soo brushed it off as he was confident that he can manipulate the vengeful Kang-Ho. As the final test of loyalty to gain permission to marry Ha-Yeong, Tae-Soo ordered Kang-Ho to kill his secretary, Hwang Soo-hyun and his illegitimate baby son to prevent scandals that would harm his presidential campaign. However, Kang-Ho secretly hired a boat captain to get Soo-Hyun and her son to safety while staging a car crash to make it looked like he killed them. Tae-soo did not trust Kang-Ho so he sent his own men to ambush the boat to kill Soo-hyun and her son, but she managed to hide her son in the ship and jump to her death while carrying a fire extinguisher to disguise it as her son into the river below to fool the pursuers that both her and her son were drown.
Tae-Soo forced his own daughter to drug Kang-Ho in a car accident he orchestrated to kill him but Kang-Ho survived and lose his memory, causing him to be regress to a mind of a child. Unknown to Tae-soo and Woo-Byeok, Kang-Ho secretly hid a flash drive contains his own diary behind the picture frame of his family so it can be used by his mother to avenge her husband as insurance in case whatever happens to him. Young-soon tried her best to make her son becomes normal again, despite the fact that she suffered from stomach cancer and did not have much time left to live.
After many trials and tribulations, thanks to Young-soon's endless maternal efforts, Kang-Ho managed to regain his memory after Tae-Soo sent people to burn down Young-Soon's pig farm to kill both Young-Soon and Kang-Ho. At this time, Mi-joo reveals to Young-soon that her twin children are actually her grandchildren. Kang-Ho manipulated Tae-soo to turn on Woo-Byeok and baited Woo-Byeok into confessing his crimes of disposing his henchmen when they know too much.
Oh Ha-yeong was disgusted with her father's ruthlessness in murdering her younger half-brother as well as making her complicit in the murder attempt at Kang-ho and refused to participate in anymore of his schemes, so he punished her by putting her into mental asylum. Mi-joo and the village troublemaker's Bang Sam-sik broke her out so she can testify against her father. During the trials, Kang-Ho presented all the evidence of Woo-Byeok's wrongdoings but he vehemently denied. To complete the plan, Kang-Ho makes Tae-soo to stand as witness to reveal all Woo-Byeok's criminal acts including embezzlement, inside trading and bribery. Tae-soo even claims that Woo-Byeok was the father of Tae-soo's secretary son to defect blame into him.
However, Kang-Ho delivers a coup de grace by making Ha-Yeong to testify against her father and presenting the surviving son of Soo-Hyun in the courtroom. With undeniable proofs, both Woo-Byeok and Tae-soo are convicted for their crime as Kang-Ho successfully avenged his father. Due to being complicit in the attempt to have Kang-Ho killed, Ha-Yeaong was sentenced to two years in prison. To bring down Woo-Byeok's dynasty for good, Kang-Ho reopened the trial of Woo-Byeok's nephew and finally convicted him of murder and rape. With the vengeance fulfilled, Young-soon gives her blessing to Kang-Ho and Mi-Joo to be official husband and wife and finally passes away peacefully as she succumbs to her stomach cancer. Kang-Ho quits his job as prosecutor to manage the family pig farm to honor his parent's memory and lives happily with his wife and twin children.